USA qualifies for 2022 World Cup

We're a weird region because the gap between the top 2-4 teams and the rest is pretty huge. Mexico/US/Costa Rica (and now Canada apparently) are all legit 2nd-3rd tier programs, but after that it gets dire really quickly.

Africa doesn't have any teams better than our best, they just have more. Asia is similar to us: Some 2nd tier teams and a lot of trash.

I'd say it's relatively fair overall. It'll always change based on changes in relative strengths of regions, but few regions ever have more than 1 team that truly doesn't belong.

I think that you are overrating CAF teams.

Wikipedia has a chart showing historic success of teams from each confederation. The gist of it is that UEFA and CONMEBOL teams have dominated.  Then CONCACAF teams have slight edge over CAF and AFC teams.  OFC is in a distant 6th place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup

There may be more parity amongst the CAF teams than in CONCACAF, but I don't think that the quality of the qualifying teams is any better and so I don't think that more slots for CAF teams would be justified.

(1) is Concacaf way weaker than the other regions?

The long answer depends on how you define weaker, but the short answer is no, CONCACAF (North and Central America and Caribbean) is probably the third best region behind Europe and South America.

The definition is important, though, because there are different ways to define strength, such as how good are the best teams, how good is the average team, how good are the worst teams, etc. CONCACAF typically has two solid teams (Mexico and the US), a few decent teams (Costa Rica, Panama, recently Canada), some meh teams (pretty much the rest of Central America), and a lot of garbage (the various Caribbean countries). So CONCACAF is pretty top heavy. Africa (and maybe Asia too) are probably stronger in the middle, not surprising given that over 3/4 of CONCACAF are the small Caribbean teams. But I'd say that the top CONCACAF teams are typically clearly better than the top teams of all but Europe and South America. And I feel like looking at the top is the best way to judge the regions; trying to see what region's middle of the road teams are marginally less awful doesn't seem very useful in the grand scheme of things. Instead I prefer to look at who has the best chance of success in competitions like the World Cup.

For comparison sake, Europe is clearly the best region, with a staggering number of elite, very good and good teams (Mexico and the US typically top out at good to very good, while the best of Africa and Asia are usually no better than good). South America is no slouch at the top ether, with typically a few elite teams, and has the best depth top to bottom, though this is helped by the fact that there are only 10 teams in a soccer crazed continent.

(2) is the WC distribution unfair?

It really depends on what you value, and is very similar to the arguments surrounding the NCAA tournament, such as P5 vs mid major at large qualifiers. If you value talent, Europe and South America deserve even more bids. Every World Cup cycle, there are European (and probably South American) teams that don't make it that are probably better than the best teams out of Africa and Asia (not to mention the lower ranked qualifiers from those regions as well as CONCACAF). On the other hand, the World Cup is very Euro and South American-centric as it is. Europe already makes up close to half the field (13/32), and 4 or 5 out of 10 (depending on the play-in) South American teams make it as well. It's hard to justify adding even more of these teams at the expense of the rest of the world; if you want to watch an all European/South American tournament, you can watch the Euro or Copa America championship. A lot of the fun of the World Cup (just like the NCAA tournament) is seeing all of the "other" teams competing and occasionally pulling upsets.

There's no easy answer, since the competing values will always be at tension. And I'm not sure expanding the tournament, like they are in 2026 (from 32 to 48 teams) really helps, since it just dilutes things (just like I don't think going from 64 to 68 in the NCAA tournament makes things better for anyone except the four extra teams that make it now).

It’s hard to justify Europe getting fewer slots when Italy, Sweden, and at least one of Wales and Ukraine (all top 30 teams in the FIFA rankings) will miss the WC.  
Had the World Cup structure stayed the same for 2026 I would have liked to see them implement something like what concacaf has, where the lower level teams play each other to move to the next round, and the best teams aren’t involved until a third or fourth round. Instead of nearly 60 teams all playing 8-10 games and then a 2nd place playoff, I’d prefer something where the bottom, say, 40 teams are all seeded into groups of 4, and play 3 games, with the winners advancing and maybe a playoff among the second place teams to reduce the number of teams to 36. Then you draw them into 6 Hexagonals, 10 matches each, top 2 advance and a playoff for the last spot among the six 3rd place teams.  I don’t think it makes sense to have the likes of Germany and England play Andorra or Liechtenstein.  Germany basically had a free pass to advance, while the Belgium/Wales/Czechia group was substantially tougher.  The above system would at least ensure that if a team is left out they deserve to be left out.  
African qualifying was worse. Teams that won their group were drawn into a winner-take-all two legged playoff. It is plausible (and nearly happened) that a team could win all its group games, then draw both legs of the playoff and be sent home if there were more goals scored in the home leg of their playoff.  As it was, two African teams were eliminated on the away goals tiebreaker, and Egypt was sent home after losing on penalty kicks during which fans were pointing laser pointers at the shooters as they were kicking. Brutal.

That said, it’s a bit irrelevant because the next WC will have 48 teams, not 32. If you want to see Africa get more slots, the good news is they’re going from 5.5 to 9.3 (9 full slots plus the interconfederation playoff). Europe is going from 13 to 16.2, so they will have a smaller percentage of teams advance, but it’s less likely that a team like Italy or the Netherlands will be eliminated in qualifying.  The downside is that concacaf qualifying will be less exciting as probably 5 teams will advance (starting in 2030, if they keep the 48 team format), but at least the US shouldn’t see another disaster like 2018.

Late November? Probably makes sense and the World Cup is a great event but....I'm hoping my sports attention will be elsewhere at that time of the year.

Not implying that the world's sporting events should revolve around American football. The 2020 Olympics happened during the hottest time of the year in Japan so as to not conflict with NBC's coverage of the NFL, and it was a grind on the athletes. It's just kind of a personal bummer because I usually enjoy the world cup and will not be paying much attention this time around.

The hell are you talking about? Clubs regularly play their B squads in inconsequential matches. And as I said, no one will ever try the forfeit in a similar situation because it would lead to outrage and run counter to the competitive nature of virtually everyone on the pitch. Not even the corrupt AF Italians would do this. As I said, a forfeit for similar reasons has never been done. 

Vargas' header on the first goal was a free run struck with power with horrific set piece defending ( Zimmerman and Robinson were clueless ball watchers most of the night) . A nice Corner kick feed that was too far out for Steffen.

Not saying Steffen was perfect or should start but our defense was nowhere near world cup caliber yesterday, especially against set pieces. Our offensive set pieces weren't too good either until Reyna came in. Our defense also must have made a dozen unforced weak passes/turnovers that were JV level. 

They got the result but I felt like Pulisic after the match. Meh and later yay!